The pendulum of female inheritance in de Stail's, Corinne and Hemans', "Properzia Rossi" swings both ways. There is at once, especially in Corinne, the send of acquiring an inheritance. This becomes of utmost importance because it is Corinne's inheritance from her father and her mother, the gift to the orphan, that allows her to live an independent, artistic life. She does not need to marry in order to support herself. She can marry for love if she chooses. Because of her inherited wealth, Corinne herself resists commodification in the traditional monetary sense. She is still often commodified by her male counterparts, but it is more for her artistic talents and beauty than as a financial alliance. All of her admirers are financially prosperous, through their inheritances, so they are never after her money. Corinne's value is through a more emotional commodification, that of art. She is at once both an artist and an object of art (which she has crafted herself). Even now we can hear whispers of Woolf's, Room of One's Own, because we have an example of a woman who is able to "create" due to her financial and social independence.
Another important aspect of inheritance in Corinne, is the moment where Corinne is able to pass on her talents to her niece, Juliet. Here we "hear" how Juliet recites poetry and speaks Italian with the same passion and inflection as her aunt...that perhaps Corinne has been able to "pass on" that "passion" to her progeny-once-removed (the child of her sister and former lover). It is relevant because it happens while Corinne is withering on her deathbed (a very long withering, but one nonetheless). This becomes in someway a deathbed wish for inheritance. And as we've seen throughout the novel of Oswald's tortured desire to honor his father's deathbed wish, this moment is taken very seriously. It is important to note that what Corinne passes on to Juliet is the ability to create, to improvise, to be passionate and eloquent and artistic. It is not an endowment of money, but of craft, of skill, of creating.
This deathbed inheritance is reiterated in Hemans' poem, "Properzia Rossi." Again we have the jilted, denied artist withering on her deathbed, wishing to give her life's work to those she leaves behind. She writes, "I would leave enshrined/ Something immortal of my heart and mind,/ That yet may speak to thee when I am gone,/...something that may prove/ What she hath been..." (29). Here we have the artist passing on her art, passing on her work as she herself is "passing." But she is passing it on to her lover that has left her. In this way, she is saying that this lover can deny her love, but he cannot deny her existence. That she was here because her art is still here. He cannot deny that because her work, her craft solidifies her existence and his moment in her final one which is a harsh and critical reproach for him having denied her. So here we have an inheritance, though maybe one unexpected and undesired, that is not so much a gift, but a burden. She bestows on him her denied love like a yoke. And one that he is not able to refuse because one cannot argue with the dead.
Another important aspect of inheritance in Corinne, is the moment where Corinne is able to pass on her talents to her niece, Juliet. Here we "hear" how Juliet recites poetry and speaks Italian with the same passion and inflection as her aunt...that perhaps Corinne has been able to "pass on" that "passion" to her progeny-once-removed (the child of her sister and former lover). It is relevant because it happens while Corinne is withering on her deathbed (a very long withering, but one nonetheless). This becomes in someway a deathbed wish for inheritance. And as we've seen throughout the novel of Oswald's tortured desire to honor his father's deathbed wish, this moment is taken very seriously. It is important to note that what Corinne passes on to Juliet is the ability to create, to improvise, to be passionate and eloquent and artistic. It is not an endowment of money, but of craft, of skill, of creating.
This deathbed inheritance is reiterated in Hemans' poem, "Properzia Rossi." Again we have the jilted, denied artist withering on her deathbed, wishing to give her life's work to those she leaves behind. She writes, "I would leave enshrined/ Something immortal of my heart and mind,/ That yet may speak to thee when I am gone,/...something that may prove/ What she hath been..." (29). Here we have the artist passing on her art, passing on her work as she herself is "passing." But she is passing it on to her lover that has left her. In this way, she is saying that this lover can deny her love, but he cannot deny her existence. That she was here because her art is still here. He cannot deny that because her work, her craft solidifies her existence and his moment in her final one which is a harsh and critical reproach for him having denied her. So here we have an inheritance, though maybe one unexpected and undesired, that is not so much a gift, but a burden. She bestows on him her denied love like a yoke. And one that he is not able to refuse because one cannot argue with the dead.